bascule

Yes, the entire house of cards will come crashing down. Wait, what? Please remove your tinfoil hat. You care to defend any of these statements or are you just throwing them around like mud? This was a relatively isolated incident. The majority of climate data remains freely available. Any "skeptic" who wishes can download the data and source code needed to reproduce GISTEMP's analysis. How do you even correlate this to Hansen? While there does appear to be a certain degree of malice involved in some of the individuals implicated, this is for the most part little more than an overblown smear campaign, uncannily occurring around the same time as the Copenhagen summit. This incident has zero effect on climate science as a whole, but I think it does speak volumes about the adversarial nature between the climate science community and "climate skeptics." You should keep in mind that both sides are to blame here. I don't know if you've noticed but "climate skeptics" are sort of, well, dicks who have absolutely no respect for the science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that dramatically increased the power of the federal government to regulate economic activity. A farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed his chickens. The U.S. government had imposed limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to drive up wheat prices during the Great Depression, and Filburn was growing more than the limits permitted. Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine. The Supreme Court, interpreting the United States Constitution's Commerce Clause (which permits the United States Congress to "regulate Commerce . . . among the several States") decided that, because Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce, and so could be regulated by the federal government. I'm not sure how you would extend this argument to the Controlled Substances Act though. There is no open market, so how would producing something within your own home for your own use affect interstate commerce? Indeed, the government is declaring the market illegal.

I liked the Kissinger quote in the comments of the article swansont linked: "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"

This sounds like it probably belongs in Homework Help

So will letting people get drunk. Yet for some reason that's legal. All that aside, ParanoiA was linking to a case in which someone, growing food on their own property for their own use, was found to be in violation of a federal law, under the auspices of "Interstate Commerce". I'm not sure what horrible slippery slope of Constitutional Law lead SCOTUS to that decision.

I'm sure this device will get just as hacked as the iPhone and you'll be able to install MobileTerminal and a full *IX environment onto the thing

Well, Apple has announced their newest unnecessary gadget for everyone to go out and buy. What do you think about it?

From our friends at The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/science_channel_refuses_to_dumb "At this point, having the word 'how' in a show's title is about as close to scientific investigation as we get," Myers said. "In fact, I don't even know how we can justify airing a show like Mantracker at all. A cowboy hunts contestants down using his trailing skills? I guess you could say it makes the audience use 'observation' by watching what happens on screen." "Observation is a part of science, right?" Myers added.

The lesson here is that in attempts to compromise the bill in order to satiate conservative Democrats, it's turned into a horrible morass which is a shell of the healthcare we were originally promised. The latest news is that the pre-existing condition exemption may only apply to those who are less than 19 years old: Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions. What exactly does this bill do again, besides business as usual with a huge government subsidy for the insurance companies? Yes, the net effect is more (not all) Americans end up insured, but is this really the best we can do?

All you need in order to get started on iPhone/iPod touch development is to download Xcode. From there you can begin developing in the emulator.

Oh really? Seems you were knocking both Europe and liberal Dems earlier: How is this any different than "Moderate conservatives are saints, liberals are sinners, Europe's a bunch of hippies, America is fine the way it is"?

I think the general sentiment is that if you believe some things (like God) can be eternal, why can't that apply to the universe itself? If God can be exempt from a first cause, why can't the universe be as well?

Can I rephrase this? Thanks. I mean, I am in Europe right now, so perhaps my perspective is a bit tainted, but... The supermajority was seen as a mandate to elevate the availability of services in America from above a third world level, instead of what it really was -- a shift America's largely conservative/reactionary voter base who aren't even remotely interested in having government services on par with the majority of first-world (and many third world) nations. Europe is pretty awesome and has a lot of the problems the plague America solved already. Unless America gets its act together I might end up moving here. It gets rather frustrating having a largely ignorant base of knuckleheads giving carte blanche to the Republicans when they screw up the country, then whining like little babies when the Democrats try to do anything to fix it. Not that the Democrats will fix it, as they're not only fairly conservative, but afraid to take action (or worse, accepting bribes not to do so). Compared to Europe, America is just rather... backwards and I don't see that changing any time in the near future. Those progressives you whine about, Pangloss... are the only ones actually trying to fix the country and the only ones willing to take action. The conservative Democrats you argue the progressives you should kowtow to are offering spendy, half baked solutions. In my mind that's worse than no solution at all. But hey, at least those solutions are "compromises"! Or rather, compromised... I don't like politicians bandying about the nation's pocketbook as if it has infinite credit any more than the teabaggers do, and I especially don't like politicans spending more money on half-baked solutions. Eliminating the public option will cost more, hands down, and the only "pro" is certain politicans are afraid of the public option (or how their campaign contributions might diminish if it were passed)

One explanation is the Big Bang was caused by events before the Big Bang. Those events were caused by earlier events. This process can go on ad infinitum as an infinite causal regression. While this is not intuitive, it is a possibility. There is no need for a first cause any more than a line in geometry needs a "beginning". A line can go on forever. I'm not sure how you can have an infinitely large cycle. Perhaps that's a question for the Mathematics forum.

The public option was also one of Obama's campaign promises: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/obama-demands-the-bill-i-sign-must-include-public-option.php [A]ny plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans - including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest - and choose what's best for your family. AND one of Pelosi's promises: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26742.html In her strongest statement yet, Pelosi said that any bill "without a strong public option will not pass the House": “Any real change requires the inclusion of a strong public option to promote competition and bring down costs,” Pelosi said. “If a vigorous public option is not included, it would be a major victory for the health insurance industry.” If this bill passes without a public option, both Obama and Pelosi will have broken their promises. This isn't about progressives at all. Both Obama and Pelosi are relative moderates.

The simple answer: There are 64 squares on a checkerboard. With a 64-bit CPU this allows you to build "masks" of the board as a single integer. For example, you might represent all of the possible spaces a given piece can move to as a single integer. This is very handy for performance reasons.

At the same time they should stop worrying about bipartisanship. They have (or had) a supermajority and should make the most of it while it lasts. Given how little they've actually managed to accomplish with it, it doesn't seem like it will last for long.

Well, even so, that seems like little more than a slippery slope argument to me, until they try to actually ban books. Even if they suggest interest in doing so at some point...

Was this even referenced in the verdict?

Which ones? Why can't the universe originate from an infinite regression?

If you're looking for a language that makes it easy to do graphics programming, you might consider Python and PyGame. If you want an easy tutorial, Try Ruby. There's also the RubyGame and Ruby Processing libraries for graphics.

Here's a review of this book from Nature magazine: http://www2.cruzio.com/~quanta/review.html As you can probably guess, it's not a particularly positive one.

I favor abandonment of the current healthcare plan, and I'm supposedly a pinko commie.

To me this is a corporations vs. individual rights issue. Per this ruling corporations win. It doesn't matter if said corporation is Wal-Mart or a labor union. This is a collusion of personal freedoms with corporate rights which is extremely deleterious in my mind. I strongly disagree with the idea that the bill of rights applies to a corporation. I personally wish things would go back to the way they were.

This really deserves its own thread